George Clooney compared Joe Biden to George Washington in his first comments since writing a bombshell article in the New York Times on Sunday. Calls for 81-year-old president to step down his attempt for re-election.
The Hollywood heavyweight flattered Biden while ignoring the furious and sometimes embarrassingly public “conspiracies” behind the scenes — including by Clooney himself — that led to the president’s bowing out.
“The person who should be applauded is the president who has done the most selfless thing since George Washington,” Clooney said, referring to the nation’s first commander in chief who left office after his second term, when he was asked about the Times essay during an interview at the Venice Film Festival.
“All the plot twists that got us there, none of that will be remembered, and it shouldn't be,” the 63-year-old actor and director said. According to Entertainment Weekly,
Following his disastrous performance in a debate against Republican rival Donald Trump in July, there was a united effort by high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, including Nancy Pelosi, to oust him from the presidential race.
Many members of Hollywood and the left-wing media, such as Clooney, joined the effort with a series of carefully presented public comments and essays.
But Clooney, whose own essay was titled “I love Joe Biden, but we need a new candidate,” said Sunday that he doesn't want this to become what history remembers.
“What should be remembered is the selfless act of someone who … you know, it's very hard to give up power. We know that. We've seen it all over the world,” he said.
“And if somebody says, ‘I think there’s a better way forward,’ all credit to him, and that’s actually true,” Clooney said of Biden.
In his July essay, Clooney expressed his long-term support and admiration for Biden, but said that after the presidential debate with Trump, the effects of age on the president could not be ignored.
“The one battle he can't win is the battle against time. None of us can. It's sad to say this, but the Joe Biden I was with at a fundraiser three weeks ago is not the 'big deal' Biden of 2010. He's not the Joe Biden of 2020. He's the same guy we all saw in the debates,” Clooney wrote in the Times,
“Was he tired? Yes. Had a cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.
Clooney urged the president to step down, saying, “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do the same in 2024.”
In Biden's first interview since dropping out of the race – thereby paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him – he singled out Pelosi by name, saying she had been pushed out by the party's top leadership. He said members of the House and Senate running their own re-election campaigns decided she would be a liability to their future.
“Many of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought I was going to hurt them in the race. And I was concerned that if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic – you'd be interviewing me about why Nancy Pelosi said (something) … and I thought that would be a real distraction,” Biden told “CBS News Sunday Morning” earlier this month.
